Which is why i think GMO's ought to be done by universities and governments for the public benefit, not by corporations for profit, and one of the goals should be genetic diversity for exactly the reason you state.

Also, I'm uncomfortable with a corporation having so much influence over the world's food supply.

Last, the profit motive would compel a company to attempt to sweep problems under the rug more than publicly funded development would.

So, I'm pro-GMO, but I think it should be done by the public for the public.

--PM

I think the proposition that NOT using GMOs risks global catastrophe might have more odds in its favor than using GMOs.

Consider:
Bananas, citrus, chocolate, coffee are all threatened by pathogens or climate change. There are some credible pathogen threats to wheat as well.

In the case of citrus, the ONLY (**ONLY**) resistant variety to citrus greening disease, out of ALL the citrus varieties on the plant, is a GMO variety that has genes from spinach spliced in.

So we have a case of, worldwide collapse of citrus production, OR GMO citrus.

I think I'll take the GMO citrus, thank you very much. If I were a Florida planter, and I weren't worried about anti-GMO hysteria, I'd be replacing my citrus orchards (as they die) with GMO plants.

As I referred to above, similar threats are either now or are poised to decimate bananas, coffee, chocolate, and wheat, though I'm not so sure that the naturally resistant variety situation is so dire in those cases.

Best,

-PeterM

Why said anything about lawlessness? What *law* would stop a bunch of CDC experts from showing up at the hospital and saying to the admins, "Here we are, this is a very serious situation, and we've brought X and Y and Z resources to help. Let us help you please."

I *know* that if I'm a hospital admin, and there are these guys in my office offering that class of help, I'm not going to be saying "no".

So what laws would be broken, exactly? If the CDC offered that level of help (quite legally) and the hospital (also legally) told them to go take a hike, we'd know EXACTLY who to blame. Furthermore, the CDC would be on the spot in force able to cope with the screw up.

--PM

But by next year Ebola,if not brought under control, will be one of the top 10 causes of death worldwide.

--PM

People are lining up to get ANY job. The 1% isn't leaving as many crumbs for the poor and middle class as they used to!

--PM

The CDC should have been all over the hospital jurisdiction or no jursdiction. People's lives are on the line.

It's quite evident that in the US there are people who can handle ebola. These people were not in Texas, and the stupid hospital admins did not realize that they needed the help. Regardless of that, it's been demonstrated that help has to be forced upon any hospital handling Ebola whether they like it or not.

--PM

Right you are, I miscalculated. Thanks for catching it.
I actually did kWm instead of kWh. (Kilowatt minutes).

That's 141 A at 120V (DC). It's about the sum total of the power that could go into my house at any given moment.

Not really a 'direct connection to a power plant' required.

--PM

Yes, right NOW Ebola isn't a common way to die. Only 8k cases.

WHO projections of an uncontrolled Ebola epidemic have the number of cases up into the millions next year.

So apparently Ebola can become one of the top ten causes of death worldwide within 1 year. It has already overtaken terrorist attacks. In a month or so, it will have overtaken lightning deaths (60k per year worldwide).

I just hope that we can do better than 'uncontrolled'. So far it has not been a happy trend.

--PM

OK, in Texas, we have 1 health care worker infected per 1 patient, so far, and the sick health care worker was aware of the ebola and trying hard not to get it.

In Spain, we have 1 health care worker infected per 1 patient, also aware of ebola and trying hard not to get it.

On the postive side, the West has managed to treat 3 others without any more health care workers getting sick.

So in the West, the score is maybe 5 patients and 2 health care workers sick so far.

I would call that alarming. But wait, it gets worse.

In Africa, health care workers are 5% of the cases overall.
http://time.com/3502002/ebola-...

Presumably they are doing their best not to get infected too.

We need to do better, far better, in protecting health care workers both in the West (where we are doing poorly) and in Africa, where we are doing VERY poorly.

--PM

AIDS doesn't cause contagious blood, spit, diarrhea, and vomit to go everywhere. Ebola does.

AIDS doesn't infect health care workers who are treating patients unless there's a needlestick or sexual contact. Ebola does, with alarming frequency. Even if you DO have sex with someone with AIDS, it's not 100% that you'll get AIDS.

AIDS can't be spread by sneezing or coughing. It's possible Ebola *is*.

In terms of contagiousness, Ebola seems 10x worse. It's like saying "smallpox is no worse than chickenpox". Maybe if you put them both on a logarithmic plot and back up 50 feet!

--PM

I looked it up, an M8 class star (the lightest I could find) is about 1.99e29 kg of mass, jupiter is 1.9e27 kg, so it missed being a star by 100x.

So, it is TWO orders of magnitude from being a star, right in the middle of your range.

--PM

What the Z machine does is zap a little metal box of wires that may contain fusionables with a high voltage/current pulse that is stored in a really enormous bank of capacitors. Naturally that destroys their target and makes kind of a mess in the process.

I think they manage 8 shots/day if they're lucky.
8 shots/day is a far cry from a reasonable power flux. I'm not sure current pulsed power technology (not to mention other engineering) could stand doing this at some reasonable frequency like 1Hz without breaking down in a few minutes.

But at least they put a good fraction of the power input into the target, NOT like laser fusion--the lasers are horribly inefficient. (1%?)

-PM

Apparently, about 2000 individuals is enough to rebuild the human race. Because DNA information indicates that at one point there were about that many people alive. (Google 'human population bottleneck' and take the top link returned to Wikipedia.)

--PM

And Mars is the wrong habitat for altered humans. If you're going to fix humanity, remove dependence on uncommon conditions. Instead, make us survivable in common conditions:

high radiation
low temperature
vacuum
microgravity

Then we can go live on asteroids or artificial space habitats and not worry about expending a lot of energy just to leave our home rock and find another one. We can live in orbiting space habitats and move them out of the way if a big rock is coming our way. If one space habitat gets smashed anyway, well, tragic, but ideally we'll have millons.

And these re-engineered humans will have a far, far easier time making it to other solar systems, but not to other "life zone" worlds, but rather to artificial worlds in orbit free of the worst chains of gravity.

--PM